


Beauty

by Augustus



Category: The Bill
Genre: M/M, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2000-10-26
Updated: 2000-10-26
Packaged: 2018-03-08 02:18:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3191603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Augustus/pseuds/Augustus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John watches Rod.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beauty

I watch him, carefully arranging a file in front of my eyes, pretending to be intent on perusing the paperwork, rather than intent on watching the play of light in his hair, or the smile that twitches the corners of his mouth as his eyes flicker over the pages in front of him.

He's beautiful.

It’s not a word that you'd normally use to describe a man, but it somehow works perfectly for Rod. There's a downright prettiness in the way he holds himself; in the glint of grey-blue eyes when he looks at you poutingly, enticing you with raised eyebrows to complete surrender to every whim.

And he knows the effect he has on me. I feel the smirk beneath his lips as he emerges victorious yet again from the struggle of power and authority that neither of us has tainted with any vocal acknowledgement. He holds all the power, and I can tell he knows with a brief glance into those eyes.

And, for a change, I find myself not minding.

Slender fingers reach out to turn a page and my mind tears itself from aesthetic worship for the moment required to wonder what it is that he's reading. Obviously nothing work related. I can't remember the last time that I managed to raise an amused smile over a pile of paperwork or one of the DCI's budgets. Probably never.

His face is the clichéd picture of concentration. _// Ah, Rodney, if only you put this much enthusiasm into catching villains…//_ A stray tendril of fringe has escaped from the perfectly gelled and arranged whole. _// If only he knew…//_ Lashes flicker attractively as he blinks, teeth pulling the bottom lip slightly into his mouth in an unconscious stereotype of complete attention to the task at hand.

And I'm trying not to think about that mouth. Trying not to think about covering it with my own, trying not to wonder how his lips would feel linked softly with mine. And I'm trying not to imagine the warmth of his breath when those lips twisted into a smirk of complete victory only inches from my own.

Trying, but failing.

A flutter of pages, and I'm able to see what it is that's so much more accomplished than I when it comes to keeping his attention. Star Wars. _// Should have known he's a closet geek…//_ I can just picture him at the co-op, hiding the latest comic beneath a girlie mag to protect that fragile Skase reputation. And I find myself wondering if he's a Leia guy, or whether it's Han who keeps him returning to a universe far from here. And I'm hoping that it's the latter, although of course I'd never admit it. 'Cos it's not something that I'd care about, is it, whether one of my D.C.s ever imagines himself as the meat in a Solo and Lando sandwich. Not this Detective Sergeant. Not John Boulton, brimming with pent-up masculinity.

No, of course not.

Never.

But that doesn't mean I can't watch him while he's engrossed in the exploits of Luke and Myra Jade. There's nothing wrong with looking; with appreciating beauty when it's slumped in a chair at the other end of the office, a pen now gripped loosely in its teeth in a way that does things to me that I really don't want to be thinking about, thank you very much. No, there's nothing unmanly about aesthetic appreciation; nothing at all amiss in the way my eyes bathe in his features. And there's no conclusion to be drawn from the fact that I can't wrestle my gaze from that face; no theories proven by the rogue thoughts that flicker through my mind. Of course not.

That's what I tell myself, anyway…

**{fin}  
26th October 2000**


End file.
